I still remember the Chocolate Magic Cookie Bars that entertainment editor Jim Kiest brought to a potluck eight years ago.

Sharon Falls remembered them too, but she could no longer find the recipe.

She said, “I am looking for the recipe for Hello Dolly Bars, not the regular bars but the recipe made with chocolate cookies in the bottom. You had this recipe in your column a few years ago and when I made them, I thought they were better than the Hello Dolly bars made with the regular recipe.

“I have checked the Internet for a recipe for the Hello Dolly bars made with chocolate cookies and found nothing.

I originally published this recipe in December 2003 in my end-of-year round up of favorite new recipes I added to my collection in the past year. At the time, I noted that when Jim brought these Chocolate Magic Cookie Bars to a fall potluck luncheon, the rest of the features department went crazy for them.

At the time, Kiest said his recipe for a chocolate seven-layer bar is “really just a variation on the magic cookie bar recipe based on stuff I found in the baking section of H-E-B.”

Here's a tip when you make this recipe, or the regular seven-layer bars. I like to melt the butter for the bars in the pan in which I will bake them. While you are melting the butter in the pan in the oven, remove the label from the can of sweetened condensed milk, open the can and put the can into the oven at the same time the butter is melting. Remove from the oven carefully and drizzle the warmed milk over the bars before baking; heating the milk starts the caramelization process earlier, resulting in better caramelized, and better tasting, bars.

Recipe Find appears Sundays in Taste. If you are looking for a lost recipe or have a favorite recipe to share, let us hear from you. Email kharam@

express-news.net or write Recipe Find, San Antonio Express-News, P.O. Box 2171, San Antonio, TX 78297-2171. Recipe requests will be answered in this column only; due to time limitations, no personal replies can be given.